Strange Fish In Research Team's Cook Strait Catch

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28260, 24 April 1957, Page 12

Strange Fish In Research Team's Cook Strait Catch

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, April 23. A new crop of strange fish, black as ink, was discovered over Easter by the deep sea research team of Victoria University College.

The black fish were the richest haul of marine curiosities yet captured by the team, said the leader, Professor L. R. Richardson, today. Taken from between 400 and 600 fathoms, most had been caught for the first time in New Zealand.

“For 12 years we have been trying to open the door into the mysteries of Cook Strait. That door is now open,” he said. Blood red shrimps more than seven inches long, and crimson and purple squids and jellyfish lent a splash of lurid colour to the college laboratory today. Several of the new types of deep sea creatures have still to be identified.

For the first time, the research team towed its big nets—l2 feet in diameter they are cone-shaped trawls —at speeds of three knots behind the commercial trawler Admiral. The area fished was up to 1000 fathoms deep, 12 to 15 miles due south of Cape Palliser.

Among the rare specimens was the blood red prawn, discovered for the first time in New Zealand. One strange fish, the idiacanthus, has reptilian jaws which extend more than four inches wide to swallow fish bulkier and

longer than its own length of 23 inches. Also caught for the first time in New Zealand was the avocettina or snipe eel, with a strange beak like a snipe, opening out at the tip like a twisted clothes peg.

A myriad of lights, tiny phosphorescent dots, and large patches of phosphorescence lit other weird catches. One fish carried a barbel or fishing line beneath its lip. This line, transparent like a nylon trace, was lit by a red bulb of phosphorescence at its tip.